Posted tagged ‘university of maryland’

The National Orchestral Institute‘s National Festival Orchestra, housed every summer at the University of Maryland, often presents concerts that exceed reasonable expectations for an orchestra composed of outstanding students: technically accomplished, yet also full of a wonder and joy that elude many professional ensembles. (For more background, you can check out this story, which if nothing else proves that linking to myself is fun for me.)

The record label Naxos got wind of this, and their sound engineers festooned the Dekelbaum Concert Hall with microphones for the NFO’s concert on Saturday night, the first recording in what will be an annual series of recording dates, with each successive iteration of the NFO playing an all-American program for digital immortality.

The NFO’s performance of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 surely merited repeated hearings. This is a big-canvas work for a huge orchestra that tackles a great enormity, the plague of AIDS during the 1980s, through the most personal means possible: memorials for friends the composer lost to the disease. Ironically, hearing this work live made it make much more sense to me than the recording by which I had previously known it: An offstage piano, playing a tango that was a favorite of one of Corigliano’s friends, now sounded and appeared decisively separated from the main orchestra’s attempts to make sense of the death, and the waves of brass in the epilogue, spread across the stage, felt like real ocean currents with the proper sense of sonic separation.

The musicians made both these special orchestral effects and the more conventional passages sound incredibly vivid. Guest conductor David Alan Miller, music director of the Albany Symphony and a noted champion of American composers, gave his young charges clear direction and urged them to expression while fitting individual moments into the overarching structure of the symphony.

David Alan Miller. Photo from the Albany Symphony website.

Much of this music is supposed to sound brutal — the first movement is subtitled “Of Rage and Rememberance,” and the second depicts an acceleration into madness. But in this performance, each brutal moment had its own unique sonic character that drove the narrative forward, with the whopping six percussionists variegating their playingf nicely in particular. The strings played everywhere in the emotional and musical spectrum with aplomb, seething on an A to open the work and serving as a balm elsewhere, with notably eloquent solo cello work from the principal in the third movement, when Corigliano eulogizes a player of that instrument. The winds matched their counterparts in eloquence and virtuosity. Most professional orchestras would be quite proud of an effort like this.

The pre-intermission performances came up short of that standard. In Michael Torke’s “Bright Blue Music” (another work I have been waiting for a long time to hear in a concert hall), the orchestra’s various sections every so slightly out of sync with each other, making a work that should both shine brightly (hence the name!) and bustle with activity instead sound blurry and fall flat.

The same large orchestra that played “Bright Blue Music” more or less stayed on to play the suite from Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” which for pedagogical purposes is entirely understandable — no one came to the NOI not to play in the orchestra. However, textures that sound crystalline in chamber-orchestra renditions sounded big and boxy on Saturday night, creating some emotional distance from the melodies. It was interesting to hear the Copland after the Torke, however, as the Torke seemed to be made up almost entirely of the little interstitial bits Copland uses to get from melody to melody. In the right hands, Torke’s super-tonal harmonies and refusal to engage melodically makes for a oddly uplifting and meditative experience. I’m going to have to wait for a while to hear that performance live, I suspect.

Still, this was the NFO’s first full concert with a guest conductor, and the playing in the Corigliano symphony was well worth the $25 that the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center asked folks to pony up to hear it. The last two programs this year (here and here) seem like potential winners as well. Go see ’em.

To accommodate Naxos’ efforts, the audience was asked to avoid making any unnecessary noise, like applause between movements and loud coughing, and you could have heard a pin drop in the hall throughout. I confess I spent a few seconds during the concert angrily remonstrating my nose for even thinking about letting loose a sneeze. I made it without spoiling anything.

The opening bars of the Corigliano, which aren’t even that hardcore in terms of dissonance compared to what would arrive just a few moments later, chased a couple elderly audience members seated to my left out of the hall. They walked very softly, though, and I am sure the record-buying public will be none the wiser. I don’t really understand buying a ticket to a concert and then not actually listening to the all the music to which your ticket entitles you, but then again I actually like this stuff.

I’ve been attending National Orchestral Institute and Festival concerts at the University of Maryland since I was in high school, when the happening was just the National Orchestral Institute and its students performed collectively as the NOI Philharmonic. Though the musicians at NOI change every year, Saturday’s National Festival Orchestra concert, in which the assembled young people performed under the baton of Rochester Philharmonic conductor laureate Christopher Seaman, evinced the same virtues that drew me to the festival when I was young: Top-notch orchestral playing, crackling with excitement one hears only sometimes at professional symphony concerts, for rock-bottom prices – $25 for any seat in Dekelbaum Hall, in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Christopher Seaman.

Saturday night’s program of music by Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, and Gustav Holst provided a lot of opportunities for Seaman and the orchestra to wallow in sound or emotion. Skipping most of those, Seaman set flowing tempi and rarely slowed things down, even noticeably abbreviating the typical pauses between movements. Yet these were full-hearted readings nonetheless, thanks to the gorgeous sounds the orchestra made and the excitement that informed the playing.

The antics of Strauss’s “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks” have always been lost on me, I confess; I listen to hear that the fiendish horn solo comes off well and then, despite my best efforts, zone out. Here said solo did come off well (as did the woodwind pratfalls that accompany it), but Seaman’s brisk tempi allowed me to actually hear the humor of the various episodes. Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes,” drawn from the opera “Peter Grimes,” demand more atmospheric playing, which they received: you could almost hear the waves lapping on the shore in the string figures and smell the salt tang in the thin air, limned by the winds, during the “Dawn” interlude, while the storm interlude crashed all the more powerfully for holding something in reserve until a big climax.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra put on quite a fine performance of Holst’s suite “The Planets” a few months ago, and if you sat me down with recordings of the National Festival Orchestra’s rendition and the BSO’s, I’m not sure I could pick out the professional versus the nonprofessional orchestra. The Natty Festivians had a few moments where the percussion got out of sync with the rest of the orchestra, and a couple times one member of the brass hit the wrong repeated note for a couple measures, but that was it for the demerits. In the students’ favor: Massive, snarling low brass, lower strings that made an impenetrable shelf of sound when called for, sweet-toned upper strings, and all-around excellent wind playing. The 5/4 tread of “Mars” felt impersonal and relentless as it should, quick and steady on Saturday, and the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice”-esque climax of “Uranus” felt inevitable thanks to similar rhythmic intensity. “Mercury,” where the melody flits among sections of the orchestra, sounded like a continuous thought thanks to the careful coordination of Seaman and his players. The heart of the work for me, though, was the noble theme in the middle of “Jupiter,” played by the National Festival Orchestra with a simplicity and eloquence that conveyed deep emotion without digging for it. A tough trick to pull off, but Seaman and the orchestra did it.

I certainly would not have thought of conductorly restraint as something to which one should aspire. I wanted everything to be all emphasis all the time. It appears that after having eagerly sought out such approaches, I am now ready for balance and restraint to have the fore. I was feeling so nostalgic driving home from the concert and thinking about piloting my parents’ Ford Taurus station wagon to the terrible acoustics at Tawes Hall to hear a bunch of kids who were actually a bit older than me play orchestral instruments better than I could do anything, and it really gave me some perspective. It’s time to pur away childish things, For example, in this review…

For years, I’ve attended the orchestral concerts at the University of Maryland’s National Orchestral Institute and Festival, because a bunch of talented young people living, learning, and making music together often results in exciting concert-going. However, to teach those students, the NOI also gathers together various orchestral luminaries, and said luminaries put on a concert or two as well.

I always thought the orchestral faculty would probably play music for difficult-to-assemble instrumental combos, show the whippersnappers how to communicate through music, and generally have a good time. But I never went. On Thursday night, I finally tried actually attending one in the Gildenhorn Recital Hall, and it was exactly as I expected.

The first half of the program featured three medium-length combos of one wind or brass instrument and a few strings — how often do you get to hear textural variety like that? Oboist Mark Hill, violinist James Stern, violist Katherine Murdock, and cellist Julia Lichten had just the right touch in Bejnamin Britten’s Phantasy, phollowing Britten’s phree invention where it led but phinding a relationship of the parts to the whole. Phun! The high caliber of playing helped too; Lichten was particularly notable in the opening and closing notes, quiet and mysterious.

Gorgeous playing didn’t make Alan Hovanhess’ “Haroutiun (Resurrection)” enjoyable, though. Trumpeter Chris Gekker moderated his tone beautifully to fit with his string-playing colleagues, but Hovanhess’ theme dripped with sap, and the music never strayed too far from the theme and its modal harmonies even in the nominally fugal second section.

Along with violinist Sally McLain, violist Edward Gazouleas, and cellist Peter Stumpf, Frank Morelli and his bassoon brought back the fun in Carl Maria von Weber’s “Andante e Rondo ungarese.” All of the musicians enjoyed the poise of the Andante theme and the infectious rhythms of the rondo, but the star was Morelli (day job: Orpheus Chamber Orchestra), who played virtuoso runs up and down the scale with scintillating style and wit.

Frank Morelli. Photo from Orpheus’ website.

Johannes Brahms’ second string sextet made up the second half of the program: a meaty piece full of the harmonic shading, motivic complexity, and general wistful mood that we think of as echt-Brahmsian. Though a Romantic-era piece, it benefitted on Thursday from the assembled stringsters’ Classical-style emphasis on lightness and transparent textures. You could hear everything that was going on with the internal voices and follow the motives around, or you could let the emotions of the music carry you away, and I did both. The only hiccup was that David Salness and Stern, taking first and second violin, respectively, seemed slightly out of tune with each other at times. Otherwise, top-shelf stuff; Murdock and Gazouleas were exemplary middle voices, and it was a treat to hear Stumpf and Lichten make their big melodies sing.

Did I mention this concert was free? You can check out the other stuff in the NOI Festival here. There are a couple chamber concerts by the students today, which I have also always thought would be fun to check out. Maybe next year.

Every year, the National Orchestral Institute brings talented young musicians from across the country to the University of Maryland to make music together and otherwise deepen their craft. The NOI Festival challenges its charges right off the bat, with each player assigned to a chamber orchestra that has one week to prepare a piece and play it without a conductor. In the past, the students have met this impossible challenge surprisingly well. On Saturday night, the results were a little more mixed.

Young, talented people hard at work. Courtesy Alison Harbaugh.

Conveniently for your reviewer, this program repeated three pieces from this similar concert in 2010’s NOI Festival. (The young persons likely had no idea, of course, and I confess I forgot until I looked back at the earlier review in writing this one.) The first repeat on the program engaged the services of the young percussionists gathered in College Park, as nothing on the rest of the program demanded anything but timpani.

In the above-linked 2010 review, I begged for a program note for Hungarian composer Aurél Holló’s “José/beFORe JOHN5,” and yes I typed that name correctly, thanks. In 2013, my wish was fulfilled with a spectacular note, mostly taken up with Holló’s explanations of the basis of the “beFORe JOHN” series, which is based on the number 153. Said explanation in turn contained a diagram, a quote from the Apostle John, numerological analysis of the many fascinating properties of the number in question, and an explanation that “José” is fifth in the series (thus the exponent to the fifth power…I guess) and an attempt to capture a Spanish influence.

The four percussionists tasked with realizing this vision did so with verve, looking confident as they moved from clapping their hands to face-to-face duet marimba to banging an acoustic guitar with sticks. I didn’t count beats to find the 153, but they kept the work locked in a groove with very few wobbles, and as the work progressed its structure became clear and gained power. It reminded me of my constant wish for more all-percussion concerts — the timbres are more varied than folks think (as you can hear by listening to that YouTube link above), and there are so many interesting things contemporary composers are doing for these ensembles.

So that was the first five minutes. Alberto Ginastera’s “Variacones concertantes” then kept the Latin tinge going and gave each section of the first chamber orchestra an opportunity to strut its stuff. This piece featured the best playing of the evening, including lovely cello-and-harp and double bass-and-harp duets to limn the evocative theme, lush strings in the first variation and to accompany ripe horns in the horn-focused variation, and eloquent wind playing in solos (though busier passages sometimes got messy). Most of all, they played with a rhythmic energy that served Ginastera well, especially in the rousing finale.

After intermission, we had Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll” and the only non-repeat from 2010, the suite from Igor Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella.” The “Idyll” passed pleasantly but somewhat fuzzily, with strings not quite together for stretches and the horns not as bright and secure as those who had played in the Ginastera.

“Pulcinella,” though, made it clear why orchestras normally use conductors, starting in the opening measures with the worst attempt at a unison trill that I have ever heard. In this ballet, someone really needs to decide how everyone is going to handle Baroque phrasing as refracted through Stravinsky’s piquant orchestration, but everyone on Saturday had a slightly different idea from his or her fellows. The strings felt each other out and became more unanimous as the suite progressed, but it wasn’t quite enough to make “Pulcinella” come to life.

These kids’ll have a conductor (specifically, Rossen Milanov) next week and for the two Saturdays after that, and they’ll develop over the month they spend at the NOI. Were I available to attend them, I’d still go to the upcoming concerts — I’ve heard enough of the NOI over the years to know that bringing musicians this talented together often makes magic in music, even though it mostly didn’t happen on Saturday night.

The NOI’s Saturday-night shindigs continue through June 29, but there are also free chamber concerts and a performance of “Peter and the Wolf” for the kids. See here for details.

On Thursday, the National Orchestral Institute‘s New Lights chamber concert started before the music itself did. Just as the student-musicians on stage had finished tuning, other young folk (later revealed to be fellow NOIers) streamed into the Gildenhorn Recital Hall, sorting themselves into pairs that each clapped in a different rhythm and encouraged the audience to join in. The program revealed that these rhythms came from Bach’s second Brandenburg Concerto, the first movement of which we were about to hear, but even with foreknowledge the clapping struck a spark: Yes, this is really happening at a classical music concert.

The New Lights concerts have always sought to surprise, with modern repertoire played with committment and skill and presented in ways that are unusual but perhaps shouldn’t be. On Thursday, we heard music without pause for three-quarters of an hour, textures and idioms varied widely around a focal point, Paul Moravec‘s Brandenburg Gate, a chamber concerto commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as a response to the very same Brandenburg No. 2 of Johann Sebastian.

Paul Moravec watched the whole concert from a box and said at the end that this concert was “one of the coolest things I’ve ever been involved in.” Photo from his website.

From a vigorous performance of the Baroque selection, the concert slid — literally, via glissando — into a movement from a John Cage string quartet, played by students in the upstairs box seats, with the lights dimmed. Cage’s strategically noncommittal scrapes, extra-tentative here, yielded to the similarly spare but more expressive “Spiegel im Spiegel” (“Mirror in Mirror”) of Arvo Pärt, where those musicians still on the stage traded off with those in the boxes. A piano in a box close to the stage played relentless triadic arpeggios in the Pärtian bell-like style and served as a kind of fulcrum between the two groups.

Everyone got to join in on a chanting improvisation, which started with a NOIers singing whatever notes they wanted. The program encouraged us to chime in with whatever tones sounded good to us and hold them until you felt like dropping them. I sang at a low voice so I could hear the outlines of the massive chord shift and pulse, which was totally fascinating. I would do this again in virtually any group I could get to to do it. (Staff meeting ahoy!)

The cloud of sound started breaking when the NOIers began playing motives from the Moravec, eventually launching into its onrushing, clarifying energy and relentless minor seconds (in the form of “B-A-C-H”). The ripenio group of flute Mark Huskey, clarinet Jen Augello, trumpet Anthony DiMauro, and violin Kenneth Liao commanded attention at the center, playing with assurance and brio. The orchestra played a dense score with remarkably unanimity of expression, earning post-concert plaudits from the composer himself.

The Cage and Pärt performances didn’t quite get to that level, and while the program traced a clear path from piece to piece, it remains unclear to me exactly what the non-Bach works actually had to do with the Moravec. (Also still baffling is the program’s description of the substitution of a vibraphone for the trumpet in the Bach as “clever,” when clearly a trumpet was available and when the orchestra frequently had to drop its volume so the vibraphone could be, you know, heard. In general, another read-through on the program would have been a good idea.) But the format of the program kept the sense of adventure alive throughout — never a slack moment in which quotidian thoughts could intrude — and the modest length left me hungry for more.

The University of Maryland brings all these young people to the NOI because it’s just fun to have talented youths hanging out with each other, but also to help them shape their careers, meaning that they may just represent the Future of Music. If it means more concerts where musicians actively engage the audience, think of novel ways to present music, and tread boldly into modern repertoire with instant appeal, bring on the future.

Other People’s Perspectives: Anne Midgette. (No, the concert did not take place at Strathmore. Blasted headline writers. I still cringe when remembering this doozy.) Updated to add: Charles T. Downey.

On Monday, the University of Maryland School of Music presented a wind faculty concert featuring bassoonist/Artist-in-Residence Sue Heineman and faculty member/clarinetist Paul Cigan, whose day jobs are with the National Symphony, accompanied by redoubtable pianist Audrey Andrist in the Gildenhorn Recital Hall of the university’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center for the price of zero dollars. A free concert in which high-caliber symphonic instrumentalists play solo in a cozy space? That recommends itself. This year’s edition of this long-running series, while not quite my favorite, had enough novel repertoire and delectable playing to make it well worthy anyone’s time.

Sue Heineman, from the U-Md website

Heineman and Cigan split duties right down the middle, with each taking two solo turns and joining forces in two works. Cigan had my favorite new discovery of the evening, Witold Lutoslawski’s five “Dance Preludes” for clarinet and piano. The odd-numbered preludes all sprang forward at near-breathless tempi; Cigan and Andrist handled them with style, enjoying Lutoslawski’s decisive rhythms and witty turns of phrase, including some deliciously witty endings. The even-numbered preludes proceeded at slower tempi and in a more serious mien. Here, Cigan reveled in the coloristic opportunities and phrased his melodies sensitively, while he and Andrist continued to convey the dance pulse beneath it all. The fourth prelude in particular had a haunting intensity, a poised melody with a heartbeat of a rhythm beneath.

Cigan also got to show his timbral chops in the third movement of Olivier Messiaen’s well-known Quartet for the End of Time, “Abime des oiseaux” (“Abyss of the Birds”), in which he made his solo clarinet sing, twitter, echo, and softly swoon as necessary.

Paul Cigan, from the U-Md website

Cigan’s repertoire demanded the full capacities of the clarinet, and he responded; by contrast, Heineman played transcriptions of violin works, putting her own reedy stamp on them. She sounded most idiomatic in Sergei Prokofiev’s second violin sonata (in D, op. 94), playing with the various colors of the instrument as it moves up and down in pitch, stentorian low notes and creamy middles contrasting with astringent highs. Her phrasing, too, sounded entirely bassoonish, with scales well articulated and capped with a little extra breath; I missed the violin only in the fastest runs, which didn’t sound quite as fluent when keyed. My concertgoing companion, who didn’t know the original, could barely believe the sonata had been written for the violin. (And of course, as EvB points out below, it had not been; it was written for the flute. I knew this somewhere in my brain and am embarrassed that this error made it to the blog. My apologies. The preceding was an accurate representation of my thoughts as I listened to the performance, since I didn’t think of that info during the concert either.) Andrist had the full measure of Prokofiev’s spiky accompaniment as well.

A combo of two pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for violin and orchestra (Adagio in E Major, K. 261, and Rondo in C Major, K. 373), demanded less in terms of extremes of expression and pitch, and while Heineman and Andrist played with Mozartean style and balance, here I did miss the sweetness and brightness of the violin.

Audrey Andrist, from her website. Photo by Stan Barouh

The only work on the whole program actually written for the bassoon was Mikhail Glinka’s “Trio pathetique” for clarinet, bassoon, and piano, and the only problem with Glinka’s trio is that it is terrible, a mix of thundering Romantic gestures that didn’t cohere into themes, much less structures. Although Heineman had to play the role of the cello in American composer Robert Muczynski’s Fantasy Trio, it provided a lot more to savor, with rhythmically pointed yet lyrical themes that stuck in my head, particularly a questing, decisive theme in the finale that sounded like it belonged in some higher-quality “Indiana Jones” sequel. Cigan, Heineman, and Andrist played like they were enjoying the adventure.

The disappointing Glinka ended the concert, the last in a series of minor concert-presentation missteps, most prominent of which was a program that listed the works out of order, without any kind of descriptive notes. The latter would have been fine except that, even in the very relaxed concert atmosphere, Heineman and Cigan didn’t talk at all about the works. A few words from Heineman on why she selected these transcriptions in particular would have been welcome, for example. Still, a lot to enjoy, especially the Lutoslawski and Muczynski. I’ll keep a look out for next year’s show, and if you like excellent free shows, you should do the same.

It’s not often that one gets a chance to hear a large-scale contemporary work twice — most of the time you’re lucky to hear it once. (Balmer Symphony, if you don’t encore James Lee III’s Harriet Tubman piece next season, you’re missing out.) So when the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra‘s Thursday concert at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center presented the opportunity to deepen my knowledge of John Corigliano’s Symphony no. 3 for band, “Circus Maximus,” I jumped at the chance.

The last time I heard “Circus Maximus” was five years ago, when the Marine Band played it under Leonard Slatkin at Strathmore, and I felt steamrolled by something large whose outlines were forbidding and whose insides were murky. I wanted to see whether the murkiness was due to lack of familiarity or lack of clarity in the music. Thankfully, “Circus Maximus” sounds better the better you get to know it.

Corigliano has various band members spread out through whatever coliseum in which the symphony is being played, surrounding the audience in an experience even the finest 7.1-channel sound cannot duplicate at home (another reason to cherish live performances of the work). The band spends much of that time playing very loud, creating a solid wall of sound that seals you in. A recurring motif of horns whooping, with drums banging implacably behind them, sounds like a call to attention and a judgment at once. At one point, musicians march down the aisles, bringing the noise to wherever you are. You get the idea: This is a work that’s coming at you.

A bunch of students playing in the warm acoustic of the Dekelboum Concert Hall is not going to make the same amount of noise the President’s Own can in the super-live acoustic of the Music Center at Strathmore, and indeed I was able to hear myself think during this performance, which five years ago sometimes was a struggle. But the UMWO met the challenges Corigliano poses from a logistical perspective — just coordinating all these musicians scattered about the hall demands a lot of effort both from the players and the conductor. Michael Votta, Jr., the music director of the wind orchestra, had one white glove on his left hand just like another famous Michael, but he used the glove so that his finger-cues would be more readily visible in the rafters, and it seemed to work: almost all the time, the disorder in the hall was purposeful, and not an artifact of disordered playing.

In his introductory remarks, Votta also did a good job explaining the symphony, giving a concise hook for each of its movements that the audience could keep in mind as it listened. For example, Votta spotlit the “Night Music I” movement’s evocations of nature, and in the UMWO’s performance you could indeed hear the distant howls of wolves and the noises of other beasts and fowl over a constant quiet nocturnal murmur. “Night Music I” gradually segues into “Night Music II,” a urban scene with nightlife of a different sort, and it was extremely canny of the UMWO to project the changing movement titles on a large screen above the stage so no one in the audience had to wonder which movement we were in. Votta also correctly pointed out that the penultimate “Prayer” movement is full of hymn-like sounds and melodies full of hope, which the UMWO winds and brass threw themselves into just as they had earlier thrown themselves into battering the audience. The subtleties of the work, in other words, did not escape the UMWO any more than the non-subtleties did. I came away from the performance both impressed with Votta and the UMWO and wanting to hear “Circus Maximus” yet again. Let’s make it happen!

The UMWO deserves credit for choosing, as a concert opener, the maximum possible contrast to the Corigliano: Johannes Brahms’ sunny, sedate Serenade no. 2, for low strings, winds, and brass. Votta made sure the rhythms didn’t drag and the melodies unspooled gracefully, and after some initial infelicities (including two flutes playing a powerfully dissonant unison) the orchestra and its guest strings made pleasing noises. First among the frequent soloists was oboist Emily Tsai, who had a consistently lovely tone and took her melodic twists and turns with stylish assurance, but the whole thing was just the ticket to lull you into a satisfying complacence before the punch of the Corigliano after intermission.

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